Hawaii working on plan to invite back visitors

Visitor industry stakeholders are working with Gov. David Ige’s team to come up with messaging to invite visitors back to the islands.

A lack of international visitors to Hawaii combined with a COVID-19 surge and Ige’s plea for travelers to avoid nonessential trips to the state contributed to a 22% drop in August visitor arrivals from pre-pandemic times.

Though Ige’s request to travelers to take a pause didn’t come until Aug. 23, it strongly affected passenger arrivals in the last week of the month. On Aug. 23 passenger arrivals were down nearly 22% from the same day in 2019, but by Aug. 25 had fallen by more than 34%, and for the rest of the month the daily drop ranged from 43% to 72%.

HTA President and CEO John De Fries told the HTA board Thursday that tourism stakeholders met with Ige on Wednesday and reported significant cancellations and revenue loss since Ige’s declaration.

“The governor’s office has reached out to each of the sectors (of the visitor industry) encouraging them to provide his communications team with messages that may be specific to their sector of the industry,” De Fries said.

De Fries said HTA’s communications team, including Anthology and the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, have been developing messages for the governor’s team to consider when the governor sees fit to issue a pronouncement reinviting people to return to the islands.

“Two things we should expect in the next week to 10 days. One is a new emergency proclamation,” De Fries said. “We’ve got our fingers crossed that sometime in the second or third week of October, the governor will see fit because of the way that the delta variant curve is trending to reinvite visitors back to our islands.”

Still, inviting visitors back is such a tough call that even the governor’s inner circle is working through differences in opinions. While COVID-19 cases have begun to swing back to a more manageable level for Hawaii’s health care system, a new spike easily could stretch resources again.

Economist Paul Brewbaker has argued that the pandemic caused the current tourism decline rather than COVID-19-­related government containment policies.

“Pandemics depress the economy; public health interventions do not,” said Brewbaker, adding that behavioral changes precede public health policy changes.

To be sure, arrivals started declining in late July as the delta variant spread. However, they held their own for much of August, recovering to 78% of August 2019 arrivals, while spending came to 90.8% of August 2019’s level.

In August, 722,393 visitors arrived by air to the islands, up significantly from the 23,356 visitors who came to Hawaii in August 2020 but down from the 926,417 who traveled to Hawaii in August 2019, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Total spending by visitors arriving in August 2021 was $1.37 billion, down 8.9% from the $1.5 billion generated in August 2019. There isn’t a spending comparison for August 2020.

Tourism has worsened since Ige’s announcement, which some visitor industry leaders say prompted a wave of same-day cancellations that started immediately after USA Today reported the development.

Since Aug. 23 Maui County reportedly has lost more than 52,0o0 room nights to cancellations, resulting in more than $25 million in lost revenue. The Maui Hotel &Lodging Association said hotel general managers are reporting occupancy rate drops from the high 80 percentages down to 30% or even 20%. Losses also have mounted for the activities and attractions industry, MHLA said.

Kahului Airport has reported inbound passenger numbers dropping to 4,500 a day from 7,000 to 8,000 passengers a day.

Sean P. Dee, Outrigger Hospitality executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said, “We had been expecting a softening of demand on Oahu in the third quarter due to a heavy reliance on domestic visitors, but demand for future bookings was crushed following the late-August messaging from the governor.”

“Our cancellation rate increased by 300% for three straight weeks, effectively cutting 90-day bookings in half,” Dee said.

With the rise in vaccination rates as well as decreases in cases and hospitalizations, Dee said Outrigger is hopeful that updated messaging from the state welcoming back safe travelers can be communicated soon.

“Data shows that vaccinated and COVID-19-negative visitors are not the source of COVID-19 spread on the islands,” he said.